Alec Baldwin has no plans to watch the final cut of his film “Rust” following the tragic on-set death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
“Only because this is obviously the most difficult thing I’ve ever dealt with in my life,” the actor, 66, told Variety at Italy’s Torino Film Festival on Monday.
“Beyond the victims themselves, the thing that most pains me is what it did to my wife [Hilaria],” Baldwin said. “My wife has been very, very traumatized from this. There has been a lot of pain.”
“When you are married to somebody and everything was going fairly well and we had seven kids … and the floor falls out. It’s very frightening and very disturbing,” he added. “And we are trying to get the wind in our sails, to get away from this stuff. Because the film doesn’t stand by itself. It’s always going to be overshadowed by this.”
The actor fired a real gun mistakenly loaded with a live round in October 2021 on the set of “Rust” in New Mexico, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
The “30 Rock” actor was charged with involuntary manslaughter. He faced a maximum of 18 months behind bars, but during his trial the judge tossed out the case and slammed prosecutors for withholding critical evidence from the defense.
The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is currently serving 18 months in prison.
The film, of which Baldwin is both the lead star and a producer on, premiered at the Camerimage Festival in Poland last week. Baldwin was not invited to the event.
The actor told Variety he’s “happy the film got completed” after production resumed in 2023 following the tragedy.
“We arrived to the reshoot and it was a better film in a lot of of ways,” he said. “Other than Halyna. But for now, I want all things ‘Rust’ to just leave my windshield, so I can go and do other things and be a father to my children.”
The father of eight also said he’s hopeful that the film gets released in the US to “make its money back for its investors.”
Another person who Baldwin hopes “gets his money” is Hutchins’ husband, Matt, who filed a wrongful death suit, which was settled last year, and then was named an executive producer on the film after the production pause.
“We all made a deal with him and we all want to follow through,” the actor shared. “But this idea that people — who shall remain nameless — say, ‘You are profiting from this!’ That is absolutely wrong.”
In “Rust,” Baldwin plays an 1880s Kansas outlaw named Harland Rust. The actor told Variety that he gave everything he made from the film to Hutchins’ widow.
“We finish … And I waived my fee. I gave them back the fee in the budget. I waived all my backend. I gave everything to her husband. He owns the film. Her husband, I believe, is the sole owner of the film, though I could be wrong. Everything was done with that in mind,” he said.
Before the “Rust” premiere at the Camerimage Festival, Hutchins’ mom, Olga Solovey, blasted Baldwin in a statement and claimed that the actor has never apologized for the incident.
“Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologize to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death,” she said. “Instead, he seeks to unjustly profit from his killing of my daughter.”
“That is the reason why I refuse to attend the festival for the promotion of Rust, especially now when there is still no justice for my daughter,” Solovey added.
“Rust” currently has no planned American release date or distributor.
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